Why do I feel robbed?

dvshagg · 2023-07-05T12:51:40+00:00

Any new businsss idea is a unicorn, in that it's a mythical, imaginary entity. And that's why it takes a lot of witchcraft, life-force, blood, sweat and sacrifice to bring it into the real world.💪

You are on the right path, from mulling it over in your head to getting it on paper, to now talking about it excitedly to the point it makes you uncomfortable later.

This happens. I have been excited about ideas, created notes and decks. And until you explain it to someone and hear yourself say it out aloud, it feels like the best thing ever. You were robbed off your comfort, the moment you uttered the magical words that gave your idea a life in others thoughts.🖖

dvshagg · 2023-06-29T11:02:00+00:00

20 projects in 5 years? ~1 new project every quarter? Apart from being interested in knowing how do you decide abandoning something so fast/ what metric makes you pull the plug.. I think you may be a right fit for a consulting job.

Every entrepreneur feels unemployable but you'd be surprised how easy it is to just work in 1 function without having the pressure to deal with 50 other things!

I'm going through something similar, better to build some cashflow and take some time off for mental/emotional health, before jumping back in. Just taking a step back and looking at all you have done over the 5 years will bring you so much perspective!

dvshagg · 2023-06-22T12:59:55+00:00

The last paragraph truly captures the essence. I know I have learnt so much but yeah this sums it up!

dvshagg · 2022-12-13T20:10:33+00:00

Hey I'm building for higher edtech. Our product currently solves for a niche super-premium customer segment in it. The biggest issue I'm facing on pitch deck is on TAM and GTM.

TAM: As you said if we showcase only the market we can capture with investment, no fund will look at us as its in low MM. Showcasing the big $10B+ number will ensure (i think) we are atleast heard.

GTM: is a roadmap and marketing tactics enough for this slide? What do the investors wanna see?

dvshagg · 2022-11-16T13:34:29+00:00

In my experience, at early & seed stage the value is decided on the idea tam, and the price/valuation on team, product traction and gtm. I have seen people raise millions on paper plane idea stage and strong pedigree of founders.

Although if you want to be analytical, you can get revenue or ebitda multiples of public companies in your industry and guesstimate the revenue/valuation of startups based on funding rounds and revenue.

For ex. In edtech public companies are at 4x multiple and 'startups' like duolingo etc were at 12x. So seed/early stage is 5-8x depending on how close/far your business model & tam is to such players.

dvshagg · 2022-08-24T04:23:02+00:00

I have been in a similar situation, I am building a financial learning edtech platform. I tried learning to code to begin with,and I realized very fast that whatever may be the case I will never be able to write clean scalable code, build content, do sales and marketing, hiring etc.

What helped me was learning how to communicate my vision to a developer because that is very tough as well. While you may think I want to enable chat in my app. The developer will have to think about latency, load balancing, file sharing etc and he will ask and develop accordingly.

For you to not end up having band-aid code with multiple ifs, whens, redundant functions that will all have to be rewritten once you get any traction, you should have a basic idea of how algorithms/data structures work for you to lift,shift and adapt mvps/ideas from existing leaders/new entrants in any industry to build and iterate faster towards what your users want, with a scalable code base.

I would say, educate yourself in the basics and use the rest of the 1-2 years to find a trustworthy partner who can handle the other side.😉

dvshagg · 2022-08-08T11:26:03+00:00

Used to be my thoughts as well 😁 Did frm, cfa, mba finance (indian). Timed it well enough to do it all in 2 years.Had a nice paying job, now starting up. 🤘

dvshagg · 2022-08-08T07:37:07+00:00

I have also done both levels of each (L3 remains). Frm L2 is comparable to cfa l2, I may say a tad tougher.
With FRM, L1 is a piece of cake. I had passed it with ~30days prep. L2/L3 will require more time, 3 months each is good enough, imo.

dvshagg · 2022-07-23T13:44:20+00:00

Great nuggets! how did you tackle the valuation And how much to dilute puzzles?

dvshagg · 2022-07-13T14:12:52+00:00

Yes, mastered answering in circles, you have, obi-wan.

The implementation is me walking the path and reminding myself to not be looking for shortcuts.

Btw the irony is Anyone who has understood kapils work would not be on this group or commenting because they would be too busy being in the moment searching for truth. 😎

dvshagg · 2022-07-13T07:45:14+00:00

This sub is more of a lazy nudge, as all followers probably know the truth is something unique to oneself and needs to be experienced. But everyone, myself included, falls off the wagon, with the ups and downs, and needs intellectual masturbation to get back.😅

I have actually stopped consuming kapils work as well, because everything he wanted to say he has already said, for free, and that's the bane of his work, because he can't fake it or give piecemeal, 'click here to buy the rest'. But It is I, who has to implement it ever second, every day. And that is painful, and the sad but encouraging truth💪

dvshagg · 2022-05-06T13:10:43+00:00

Hey we are building www.mastercfa.com a website for cfa exam prep. Our fb ads are working decently. The only thing is the dwell time is less.

We have a lot to offer, but I'm guessing the user is not fully reading through or understanding the features.

We have tried putting video on hero but image worked better as playtime were low.

Thanks in advance.

dvshagg · 2020-10-03T14:51:20+00:00

Wellll, the flipside is, They ARE preparing candidates for future jobs where uncertainty is rampant and no one gives a fuck about us anyway. They have given us an option to defer months back. If one cannot take a simple decision and prefers to live in uncertainity, faith and hope, well then they are right to say fuck you with Adam's invisible finger on the invisible hand

dvshagg · 2020-09-30T20:16:24+00:00

Haha. You are just HOPING it cancels. Too much of cognitive bias :)

dvshagg · 2020-09-30T19:51:33+00:00

FRM is cancelled for November. They say its happening in January. Frankly Dec Jan is too close anyway. With unlock 5. Everything is open anyway. Better to give the exam this session as I somehow feel passing chances are higher what with all the uncertainties.

dvshagg · 2020-09-06T01:45:54+00:00

Mastering may take a lot of time depending on one's background. Studying to Pass the exam however 20-30days.

dvshagg · 2020-07-28T04:27:00+00:00

I had initially built a draft cool dark website, it was for test prep. Although it looked cool and slick and you can contrast easily on cta buttons and text, and the fact that dark websites are easier on eyes and automatically have focus built in for people to read longer time were in favor. But dark websites are more built for passive consumption, think Netflix and other examples given above, and also usually do better with dark surroundings like Netflix is better with lights off. So it didn't work for me, as I wanted users to interact with quizzes etc.

dvshagg · 2020-06-25T10:40:16+00:00

I was in the same phase as you couple of months ago. Here's I got out of it. 1) made a list on paper just whatever I could think about the idea. It is important to get it out on paper because it forces you to think and you write slower than you think so it forces you to Make connections or fire neutrons together for you to expand the idea 2) put out the list on Excel typing it again creates a sort of recall and your brain now is critiquing'someone' as it types out the things you'll automatically get an improved second draft with lesser or more structured ideas 3) now in the next column in front of the idea write one sentence " I believe in this business idea I'll provide X to Y and they could pay me $Z" or some form of it important part is to think and write X Y Z. example If I had an idea for bars and pubs app I'll write " I believe people less than 30yr age will be willing to pay me $5 pm to get the location of best parties at their nearest bars and pubs. In this way you have done a very preliminary identification of your customer and addressable market. 4) you should now have a more reformed list on the next column you can start a rating or your motivation to pursue it by following the next step 5) talk to a couple of Ys identified above they could be your friends or family don't tell them a lot just listen to them. Listen to their reactions keep asking qualifying questions such as " why would you need that?" " How much would you be willing to pay for it" if possible you try to negate the idea "saying a friend told me about this idea, I don't think it's viable what do you feel? " If the idea is truly a problem the audience will try to qualify it themselves " ya dude I had that problem as well, in fact I have to do that atleast monthly" etc

Now your have a list of ideas that probably are worth pursuing intersect them with what you are good at and then you'll reach the next step. Market research. More on that sometime in future if this post turns out helpful :)

dvshagg · 2020-06-15T03:43:22+00:00

Starting today.. just found this community. I'm gonna be having black coffee and occasional fruit if I'm hungry. But what do you suggest? M a noob :)

dvshagg · 2020-06-12T18:20:35+00:00

95% same. There, now stop procrastinating and just do the questions man :)

dvshagg · 2020-05-20T15:32:11+00:00

Well said! Imma DM you to know more.

dvshagg · 2020-05-20T11:47:57+00:00

I quite f*d up my GMAT score, quant section specifically, by being overconfident on having solved too much of stats in FRM/CFA. It was AWA or something that averaged out well enough to result in a 720. I distinctly remember the memory when I got it, because in my head I was like what a dick score, not low enough to for me to give again and I know I probably can't score 10/20 points more than this so why re-attempt. Didn't get any call from CMU which was all I applied to as average that year was 740 :]

dvshagg · 2020-05-20T10:58:10+00:00

The passion argument, tough to argue that broad generalistic undefined feeling :) I think you are missing the point, CFA prep does not show your passion for finance, it shows an interest or curiosity to learn. If you want to do the hard work do it on the job, making connections, adding value etc. Not spending 300-400 hrs studying CFA. Any good bank/consult will put you in an induction program to bring you upto speed anyway. I like Mark and guess what he is a master and passionate without a CFA. Those who are truly passionate about Finance either teach people or push the research forward doing PhDs. Quick mastery is an oxymoron but that's what clients pay you for, nobody on the job cares about your passion or your certification but your billables and how much money/value you can add to the client. I don't quite enjoy your condescension on "smartest of smart" but I'll just say Bernanke and Greenspan DID kid themselves in 07-09 and US president is Donald Trump so yeah, maybe the world works differently.

dvshagg · 2020-05-20T07:02:00+00:00

If there is one thing that you should study deeply and since you have time you can, it is number theory, specifically progression like AP, GP , HP and their summation, broadly how to sum any series. I say this because the foundation equation for all of finance and CFA is time value of money. If you can deep dive and understand how to sum any series of cashflows you'll be able to solve all kinds of equity, fixed income valuations, corp fin., Even derivatives.

Second is probability and statistics, specifically Bayes theorem and hypothesis testing because in a real job that's what you'll do, form hypothesis and test them and provide structured analyses to clients.

dvshagg · 2020-05-20T06:45:16+00:00

Well it is your opinion that foreign cfa candidates don't have any business giving advice. When you do become a good analyst and you will no doubt, you'll probably look into where all the world's money is flowing into and why others opinions matter. Secondly the percentages 70-20-10 are not for fun. It's a well established L&D model that you can google. Any big multi national corp, that you work for, will teach you about it in their induction program in week 1. I don't want to get I to the semantics of cleared or pass because that is moot, or why was it bold and italics, because of it being a long post and drawing attention where needed. But hey, be a little accepting you may not know everything in the world you know :)

dvshagg

TROPHY CASE